5 Strange Courting Rituals from Around the World

In this country, if you’re harboring a secret crush, Valentine’s Day is when to let it be known. Each year on that day, many quivering hands have offered chocolates and flowers, and many a racing heart has skipped a beat at the words, “Will you be my Valentine?”

The question seems rather strange when you think about it. But then again, its oddity pales next to courting rituals common in other parts of the globe.

Life’s Little Mysteries has compiled a list of some of the strangest traditions that exist to help love take first flight.

#1 In rural Austria, it’s not chocolate bon-bons that are the way to a lover’s heart; it’s apples soaked in armpit sweat. Young women do a ritual dance with apple slices lodged in their armpits. After the dance, each gives her slice to the man of her choice, and he then eats it. (Sounds a little heavy on the pheromones if you ask us.)

#2 Among the Kreung tribe in a remote region of Cambodia, parents build a “love hut” for their daughter when she reaches her mid-teens. Different boys spend the night in the hut with the girl sometimes more than one in the same night until she finds the one she wants to marry. Divorce is unheard of among the Kreung, so couples need to know what they’re getting into.